GameCola: testgame.exe - Making the Adventure (5-3-2)

-- by Lizo Medina-Gray

We have direction! A course of action! A seating plan!

After a late-night brainstorming session with the one and only Paul Franzen, there are now, literally, a ton of new puzzles in the works. (Well, it sure seems like a ton when you compare it to the… none that we had before, anyway.) You’ll see some of these starting to be implemented this month, and in bits and pieces over the next few issues, you should be able to witness all the interlocking parts fall together, which should be pretty darn cool! Or you could just wait and download the game when the puzzles have been finished, but where’s the fun in that? I mean really.

Incidentally, you may notice that the list of new things this month looks slightly more substantial than usual. Well that’s because it is. And I’m really excited about all the new stuff, which includes new characters, new animation, new things to look at, and more! (Don’t get too used to this quality of productivity, by the way—this month just happened to include spring break.)

But this month wasn’t all smooth sailing by any means. At one point I managed to overwrite a whole section of Artie’s dialogue—it’s a darn good thing there are so many versions of this thing scattered around all over the place.

And speaking of things, you’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll just throw it out there again: I need voices for testgame. The voice-needing count is now up to three, which probably warrants a whole section to itself in this article thingy. To make it look more appealing, I’m going to make it seem all fancy and exclusive, but don’t let that fool you. It’s getting pretty desperate. So here goes!

Voice Actors Wanted for the Following Characters:

Thurston – Male; bad guy extraordinaire.
Artie – Male; somewhat helpful old guy in a kilt.
*New Character* (it’s a secret until you play the game) – Female; high voice, NOT creepy, I swear.

Contact me if you’re interested. At all.

Now just download the game, for crying out loud. :)

testgame v.11

(no extra programs needed to run this file)

**Note** If you get an error message about resolution when trying to run the testgame.exe file, first open the winsetup.exe file and change the resolution option to 640 x 400.

Things to do/new features of note:

More dialogue with Artie in the cave of thorns—some more additions to plot points, and the start of a brand new overarching puzzle! (This one’s been planned for a while.)
New character! I’ll leave it up to you guys to find it. :)
New animation, including character animations for Artie and the new character.
New inventory items, all of which have to do with important puzzles. (You might not actually be able to get them yet, but they’re there, I swear.)
Radical new additions to Paul’s room (and new things to look at).
Small gameplay changes: As of right now, cutscenes can only be skipped by either pressing the escape key or clicking the right mouse button, and for those impatient people out there, once Paul starts moving, you can press escape to make him instantly teleport to his destination.

Upcoming tasks for Lizo:

I’m thinking about making a readme file for testgame, just to have a compilation of all the little direction-y things for the game, i.e. taskbar stuff, mouse clicks, and hotkeys. That’ll get done at some point, probably.
The usual. I’m getting bored with this section, and I never do the stuff I put in here anyway. Oh well. :)

All the graphics and design are by Lizo. The dialogue was written by Lizo, with significant input by Paul. Paul is voiced (appropriately) by Paul Franzen. Lily is voiced by Lizo. Omar is voiced by Jenny. Adventure Game Studio (the program used to create this game) can be downloaded at http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/

-- Lizo Medina-Gray {03-15-2006}